Author:Brown, Callum G. This is a study of the historical origins and contemporary significance of "Up-Helly-Aa". It traces the formation of Yule celebrations in the 1840s, in which inebriated apprentices jousted with sledge-propelled flaming tar-barrels to the terror of the middle classes and the police, into the civic ritual constructed in the 1880s and the 1890s by Shetland nationalists, folk revivalists, labour activists, teetotallers and municiple authorities.
eBay